Reuters via Yahoo is reporting that Sharp has announced plans to consider using Symbian EPOC operating system on handheld devices designed for the European marketplace -- specifically under Sharp's popular DHC-4600 label.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has announced plans to discontinue their HP 200LX Series palmtop PC starting on 01Nov99. In the same press release, HP said that their current focus is on building a wide-range of handheld devices based on Microsoft's Windows CE operating system. [SOURCE: M2 PRESSWIRE]

Hitachi America has announced that they will begin shipping their new tablet-style handheld PC that is Windows CE savvy called the "ePlate" in the United States starting in late Jul99. In related news, #1.) Proxim announced that their current RangeLAN2 wireless networking technology will work with Hitachi's ePlate; and #2.) Physix's latest version of "PocketChart" will available for use on the Hitachi ePlate when the device ships in the United States. [SOURCE: Business Wire via Yahoo]

Synergy Solutions' MagicText brings "double-tap word selection" and drag-n-drop text capabilities to Palm OS devices. This "text-manipulation" tool works system wide via an easy to access contextual menu interface.

Motorola and Lucent have announced a new "digital signal processor" (DSP) architecture and have released their first joint-chip under this project -- "StarCore SC140 DSP core."

Catamount Software notes that "AOL discontinued support for the older version of the AOL desktop software that Aloha for the Newton (US$30) emulated which caused Aloha to stop working on 03Jul99." A new version -- 2.7 -- has been posted to: http://www.catamount.com/Aloha2.html. This release is for Newton OS v2.0 and higher, Newton OS v1.3 devices will not be supported with an update to Aloha v1.1.3. For more information send email to: hardy@catamount.com.